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“Do you think your parents and I wanted you to move so far away? Don’t you think that we would rather you live with us forever? You’re our little miracle. Even if you aren’t that little anymore,” Dad said with a smile.
“You probably didn’t. But I needed to get away to find myself,” I told him still feeling guilty about leaving.
“And we know that. We want you to be all you can be, not just for us but for everyone. So, you can love this guy, but sometimes loving someone means letting them go.”
“It hurts, Dad. It really hurts.”
I could see that I had made my dad sad.
“You know you don’t have to do any of this, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean school. You’re probably already smarter than everyone here.”
“I’m not.”
“Aren’t you, though? And, even if you don’t have the information now, couldn’t you learn it in a week? Quin, you decided to go to university to help you figure out who you are, which is admirable. But, it’s not like you couldn’t figure it out on your own. There’s no magic formula that universities have discovered that spits out fully formed people by the end.
“Quin, you have a destiny. You are going to change the world. There is no question about it. And, taking a class called ‘Introduction to Childhood Education’ isn’t going to get you there. Quin, come home and join the firm.”
“Dad…”
“Everyone knows you’re gonna change the world. Wanna know a secret? The secret is that I know how.
“You, Quin, are going to be working with me and you are going to direct your incredible brain power onto a set of business portfolios and you’re going to find the one that will end up curing cancer, or recycling plastics or whatever. Then you are going to give them the financial resources that they need to change life as we know it. That’s how you’re going to change the world.
“Being here doesn’t help you do that. In fact, it delays it. You are going to change the world, son. Cage has his responsibilities and you have yours.”
“What if I don’t want to do any of that? It sounds so selfish to say, but what if I just want to get married and have kids like Daddy Reed did. Can’t that be okay, too?”
Dad looked at me like I had two heads.
“Quin, is that what you want?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
I looked up at Dad and couldn’t miss the disappointment in his eyes. It took a while for him to be able to hide it.
“Son, I love you. Whatever you choose to do will be just fine with me. But, let me ask you this. Even if that’s not what you want, what’s keeping you here?
“You can’t pretend — and, it hurts me to have to say this but — Cage has made his choice. He could have chosen you. He didn’t. So, it doesn’t matter if you choose him because he’s made clear what he wants. And, believe me, all you can do is respect that.”
I didn’t want to cry in front of my dad, but I wanted to cry. What hurt so much was knowing that he was right. Cage could have figured out a way. He didn’t have to drop out of school. He didn’t have to break things off with me.
He should have given us a chance to work things out. Instead, he walked away from us. That told me everything I needed to know about how he felt about me.
“You’re right, Dad. I need to let him go. And, every day I spend here is a day wasted when I could be doing the thing I was born to do. There’s no point in being here.
“I’ll pack up my things. I’m coming home.”
Chapter 16
Cage
Sitting at the table eating lunch with Nero and my mother, I again thought about how lucky I was. The man who raised me wasn’t a father. He didn’t treat me like family. This was what having a family was supposed to feel like.
After a tense conversation with Dr. Tom about what happened, he admitted that there were people at the hospital who knew about my kidnapping. Joe Rucker was a janitor there. The day I disappeared was the last day he showed up for work.
